


cross

by orphan_account



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fantasy AU, Found Family, Gradual Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-01 20:50:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10199855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There are overwhelmingly large fires breaking out in a region too close to humanity for Yuuri's liking.He, as a responsible shadow-dweller, is determined to find the creature causing the unnatural issue, even if that means he has to coerce a vampyre into helping him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> who the hell knows what this fic is, honestly!! i had this idea a few days ago and here we are. working it out of my system. somehow. OTL
> 
> i have this planned to be about 3-4 chapters or so, so stay tuned! chapters will ideally come out every friday or saturday. :')
> 
> enjoy! ♥

The fire breaks out with enormous speed, scaring off the inhabitants of the forest. Many creatures have to escape as quickly as they can, unsure of why there are flames escaping from a gaping hole in the ground, confident that life as they know it is coming to an end. About five minutes after the large fauna begins to smoke, a blonde youth crawls out of the crevice and coughs.

"Fuck," he curses to himself, looking around wildly for any sort of water resource. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" He rushes off, touching the ground and trying to call the fire back to his body while ash fills his nostrils.

Yuri is a helbrand, something akin to a fire nymph, and he's on the run. Giving his location away for the same reason he'd escaped the underworld is a shit start to his journey, but he's determined to cover this mistake up and get going. It takes him twenty minutes to clean up the patch in the forest, but he's exhausted for the efforts, and it's the best he can do to sprint into a nearby alcove before he passes out.

He can only hope that his guardians do not find him while he sleeps.

//

Victor wakes from his rest in the middle of the morning and opens his window to find that the air smells odd. Trouble is brewing in the forest, and he's not entirely sure that he wants to get involved. Part of his routine includes wandering past that atrocious odor, however, so he steels himself, sighs, and gets dressed. The heels of his boots catch on fragile tree branches, the dark marks on the shrubbery telling of fire.

 _Troubling_. Victor's nose isn't particularly sensitive, but he's been lying low in this area for quite some time, and this kind of disturbance is going to attract the attention of the shadow-dwellers. As he moves through the mangled forest, he closes his eyes and focuses on doing what he'd set out to do in the first place. It's not as if going to drain the life out of a human is his favorite activity, after all. He rather likes them.

When he gets to town, flashing smiles at everyone who gives him a glance, of course all the humans are focused on the unmitigated disaster that's befallen them. They want reasons for that fire, are trying to blame each other, and all the vile energy in the town just gives Victor a headache. Although they haven't gotten suspicious of the disappearances he's been responsible for this year, he'll have to move somewhere else.

With a sigh, he slips into the alleys, brushing off some of the air-headed folks trying to court him regardless of the chaos that their neighbors are gossiping about. Just as he's ready to say goodbye to this part of town entirely, he runs into someone and apologizes.

"Hello," a soft voice grips him and Victor is trapped in place. He's ready to groan, but this shadow-dweller is quite attractive, so he swallows dryly and forces a polite smile to his face. "We've heard reports of a mystical fire in this area. Vampyres usually take care of their territories, so what's this all about?"

Victor presses his lips into a fine line. "I had nothing to do with this."

"Victor Nikiforov, vampyre, or _upyr_ , from a distinguished line of the bloodless. Increased death toll over the last century unnecessarily, as your kind does not need to drain one human of life in order to keep living. Taking blood from several people with higher frequency would suffice, but out of respect for your heritage, the shadows had let your previous transgressions pass." The other creature is calm and almost shy in how he delivers the list of slights and Victor curses his own carelessness. "You'll be released if you will promise your cooperation in finding out who has been responsible for these fires in your area."

The silver-haired creature scoffs. "It doesn't sound like you're asking me so much as threatening me."

The shadow-dweller lets Victor so quickly that he falls to the ground. "Glad that you're so quick on the uptake." He has the gall to then look sheepish while Victor stands up and grumbles. "My name is Yuuri. Thank you for your help in advance." Yuuri holds out a hand, even though it appears somewhat intangible. "Do you have any idea what could have caused the disturbance?"

Victor sighs, clasping Yuuri's hand for a moment. "I know it wasn't  _my_ fault, but we could start by finding the root of the fire. I have some ideas." Once he feels steady on his feet again, he tucks his hands into his pockets and smiles politely. "Follow me, please."

//

Both of them walk through the forest quietly. In fact, Yuuri is  _so_ quiet that Victor nearly forgets that the shadow-dweller is following him. When Victor takes a peek at him, he's unsurprised to find that Yuuri does not seem to have feet so much as shade from the fauna gathering to his lower half. Their kind have always been somewhat eerie and Victor shivers as the burn damage gets worse. There is a hole at the center of the chaos, and the very bottom of it seems to be been sealed with magic. It's messy though, and he frowns.

"Looks like something escaped from the underworld," he comments blithely, crouching down in the dirt to see the runes more closely. "I don't suppose you can understand these?"

Yuuri's brown eyes turn yellow and the humanoid shape he's taken fades at the edges. The sensation of the other creature focusing makes Victor grow still. Once Yuuri reigns himself back in, glasses ceasing to float, he pushes them up on his nose. "Not entirely sure. If I can't find information through the network, that means we're dealing with the heavy-hitters."

"What?" Victor's not usually one to meddle in the affairs of other supernatural entities, but if celestials are somehow involved, the vampyre is amazed that he hadn't gotten dragged into their mess. He must have been sleeping very thoroughly. "Why would they be in the middle of nowhere? They don't usually get involved with business in the human realm without serious cause."

"Probably a demigod," Yuuri says flatly. "After all, this doesn't look this was a planned visit - someone  _young_ did this."

Blue eyes blink down at the shadow-dweller as the vampyre straightens his back. "What makes you think they're young?"

Yuuri smiles softly and Victor's eyes widen, studying his traveling companion. "This isn't a product of celestial rage or punishment. This is the result of a lack of experience." He shrugs and Victor chuckles.

"You've probably been on this plane for a long time." Victor's been alive for just over a century, and he's been lucky enough to stay on the outskirts of human villages and take care of himself without incident. It's sort of twisted, but he's feeling kind of giddy about being involved in this kind of worldly drama. "Does this sort of thing happen a lot?"

"More often than I'd like," Yuuri admits. "Well, thank you for your help. You're welcome to leave."

"What, that's it?" Victor's grin falls. "I wanted to find out what was happening, too."

Yuuri studies the vampyre. For one of such noble lineage to offer his services to a shadow creature willingly is either telling of his respect for one of the few governing bodies of otherworldly kin, or giving away his boredom with life. Still. Yuuri knows Victor hasn't fed in some time, and he's not fond of watching vampyres disturb the balance of human communities in close quarters. He's been around for ages, and yet, he can't get used to the sight of blood draining from bodies.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he admits quietly, trying to wander away from Victor and seep into the shadows. "You have your own business to attend to, and I have mine. This was your territory, and besides. I also wanted to test you, to see if perhaps you had lied earlier and knew something about the fire after all, but I've determined that you're innocent of this crime, at least."

"You said that I wouldn't be off of the hook until we found the culprit," Victor hums the words, throwing a little bit of vampyric lure into his tone. "And I am nothing if not true to my word." Before the shadow-dweller can get a word in edgewise, there is another explosion from afar and Victor's head jerks up. For as bad as his nose is, his hearing is better than the average _vampyre's_ , so he holds up a hand to Yuuri's face and grows quiet. "Our culprit might be closer than you think." He takes Yuuri's arm and ignores the brunette's protests while he is pried from the ground. Yuuri gets warmer to the touch with the increased distance from the shadows pooling around his legs. "Hang on tight."

Victor speeds over the hills, narrowly avoiding deer and small fae as he clutches Yuuri to his chest and follows the echoes of explosions from hundreds of miles away. Yuuri looks queasy after ten minutes of this format of travel, and tugs at Victor's high collar to make him come to a stop. The vampyre expresses his concern as Yuuri's body seeps into something like a black fog, limbs melting from their human shape into black formlessness until he recovers his breath.

Yuuri glares at him once his voice fully returns. "Don't ever do that again."

"I didn't know that dwellers were so sensitive to being away from the ground."

"You know where the powers of my kind come from," Yuuri reminds him testily, grumbling as he fashions clothes for himself yet again, albeit a little less formal this time. "The further I am from where they rest, the harder it becomes to stabilize my form, and you soared through the air for a while. I am understandably tired." When Victor says nothing, Yuuri glances upwards to find smoke billowing in the sky. "But it seems like we're close."

"You're sure you want to deal with that escaped demigod right now?" Victor hums the question and Yuuri scoffs.

"I'm not  _that_ tired," Yuuri quips back, fashioning a long, black spear from the unnaturally dark shadow he casts, amber gems sparkling in its' shaft. "And you ran here, besides. How do  _you_ feel?"

Truthfully, Victor could spend another hour resting. He's a highly skilled vampyre, but that run had taken quite a toll on him. For years, he's had no need to make full faculty of his body's abilities. Still. Yuuri's eyes are bright and expectant, and the two of them seem to have some sort of running banter going now, so he squares his shoulders and offers the shadow-dweller a confident smirk. "I'm fine - more than, actually. Let's get this show on the road."

"Hmph," Yuuri replies quietly, smiling a bit himself. "Big words. Let's see how well you live up to them."

With that, the two of them wind up running into the danger of yet another forest on fire, searching for the creature responsible for all this damage.

//

Yuri is cursing to himself as he pulls in the raging flames, and he's ready to call this whole escape to the topside a wash. There's not a chance that Yakov and Lilia haven't found him yet - all that's left to find out is what they're going to do to him when they decide to drag him back to the underworld.

He's halfway done cleaning up the mess of his rampant, wild powers when two figures show themselves through the blaze of heat surrounding him and he instinctively turns to run. Before he can get very far, panic seizing his thoughts, there are slitted blue eyes staring at him from one side, and a terrifying shadow-dweller just behind him, making him grow shock-still before he can get away.

"Hello," the shadow-dweller greets him, knocking the bottom of a metallic-looking weapon into the charred area. "You seem to be disturbed by your own lack of control, I see, since you're trying to clean things up. That's admirable."

"Shut the fuck up," Yuri snarls back. The vampyre seems entirely too amused for an uninvolved party, and the blonde is starting to wonder when his guardians had hired such uncouth creatures to find their son. "If you know that I'm trying to fix this shit, then let me go. I'm not planning on staying here long, and this isn't my fault."

The height of the flames makes the dark pool around the dweller's feet grow starker, and he pulls the young celestial to his side, pursing his lips. "Mm. Fault is perhaps too strong a word." Within moments, darkness swallows this section of the forest entirely, making the fire fizzle out, much to the awe of the vampyre. As Yuri observes both of his potential captors, he scowls. Both of them are so off-sync. If they think they can just take him quietly, they have another thing coming.

Yuri gathers his strength and gets ready to bolt, uncaring of how horribly he's been treating nature the last couple of days. There  _will_ be hell to pay if another celestial catches him, but he's got to get as far from the underworld as he can manage if he wants to be free. When he tries to call up his powers and just  _move_ , he finds out the the shadow-dweller has a lot more power than he'd initially thought, and much to his frustration, he's still frozen. "Let me  _go_ , asshole!"

"Not until you explain what's going on." The labor of keeping Yuri pinned hardly shows on the dweller's face, which pisses the youth off even more. "It's my responsibility to figure that out and report back to Headquarters. If the answer is satisfactory, I have a few conditions, but I, personally, have no qualms about releasing you after those are met."

The blonde clicks his tongue. "You expect me to stand here in pain while I talk?"

"That would be cruel and inhumane," the shadow-creature replies, letting the blonde crash to the ground and twitch for a moment before smiling wryly. "I had to wait until I could temporarily seal your powers." Yuri gapes open-mouthed at the taller man, who turns on his heel and starts walking towards a less-abused clearing in the woods. "Victor, help him up, would you? We might be here a while."

Victor - the vampyre, Yuri works out - gathers the helbrand into his arms and trots behind the shadow-dweller with a wondrous expression, drinking in the sights and the sounds of the powerful creature ahead of them as though he's never seen their kind before.

Yuri has no room to judge him, however, as he's never met anyone or anything quite like  _this_ man either.

//

"I'm not going back there," Yuri snarls quickly, taking a seat by the lake and crossing his arms. "There's nothing you can say to make me do that, either. Let me stay topside."

Yuuri sighs and Victor empathizes with the shadow-dweller. The blonde certainly is a child. "With your lack of control, I'm not sure that's a good idea. In the underworld, there's quite a bit more room, and far fewer humans. If you stay up here, you'd have to have someone help you train, at the very least."

The youngest creature in the group scrunches up his nose and quickly jabs his index finger at the older men. "Then  _teach_ me. I'll do whatever it takes to get the hell away from there." Yuuri reels back in shock at the idea, and Victor whistles. When neither of them reply, he snaps, "What? Neither of your kind know how to train a helbrand or somethin'? You got some sort of problem with us?"

Victor holds up his hands in a gesture of peace. "I'm sure that either of us are qualified to help you out in a way, but we're not celestial kin. Your power well resources are quite abundant. Yuuri?"

The shadow-dweller shakes his head with a weary expression at last. "It's taking all of my effort to restrain him as we speak, and it won't be much longer until he's capable of breaking free from my hold. I'm not sure I'm the right creature to ask, either."

Yuri clenches his teeth and stands, skin running hot as he says, "I'm not asking the two of you to babysit me for the rest of my  _life_. Can you help me get my powers well enough under control to stay up here or not? It doesn't matter what my fucking lineage is - demigods aren't  _that_ special. Just answer the damn question."

The older men trade glances and Yuuri murmurs something that releases the youth from the restraint of his shadow. Victor huffs and says, "Well. I suppose we can work something out, hmm?"

Yuuri throws the vampyre a dark look as he grumbles, "I  _do_ have other work to do, you know."

"You're welcome to do it," Victor breezily replies, grinning so widely that his fangs are impolitely peeking out from behind his pale lips. "As long as you return when you're finished to help me with our new vassal, I'm certain that things will work out."

Yuri dislikes being called Victor's vassal. Yuuri dislikes the fact that Victor, who, by all rights, should be gallivanting off to kill humans, is interested in training a young boy from the underworld how to control his power over fire.

Victor despises being bored. He's blood-thirsty, sure, but this series of events has amused him so thoroughly that he refuses to go his own way, to slide back into the corners of human society and do what he has to do in order to survive.

"If either of you wind up killing someone, we'll all have to pay the price," Yuuri warns the other two sternly. He quickly scribbles a rune onto his palm and forces Yuri and Victor to shake his hand and recite after him. "State your full name, classification, and the pact. That is the only way I'll agree to this."

" _Yuri Plisetsky_. Helbrand. Demigod. Upon threat of eternal suffering, I swear that while I remain on the human plane, I will maintain careful relations with their kind and stay peaceful." His voice is disgruntled, but his spine straightens as the pact forces him to take those words as law.

" _Victor Nikiforov._ Lone heir of the Vampyric house of Nikiforov." The power of the pact flows through him like he's being caressed by a spring breeze.

When Yuuri slides into his true form, yellow-eyed and exhausted from the long events of the past day or so, he whispers to them. "I have to recuperate for the evening, and I have reports to make. That pact will keep the two of you from doing anything  _too_ ridiculous.  _Don't_ screw this up." Then he leaves Yuri and Victor alone to their own devices.

Victor puts a hand on his hip and smirks at the blonde. "Well? I hope you're ready to train until you're bleeding, or close."

"Why? Gonna drain me dry if I do?"

The vampyre smirks, pupils narrowing further and bringing the boy to his knees with his innate persuasion. "Don't put it past me. You might have more latent power than me, but I'm still older and more experienced. With an attitude like that, I won't teach you properly. Understood?"

Yuri coughs on his spit, ready to glare at the older creature and curse Victor's name, but he quickly realizes how counterproductive this would be. Instead, he steels his resolve and grunts out, "I understand," falling on his face for the second time that day.

Before the shadow-dweller returns to check back in on them, Victor starts in on a set of rules and mentions that they should find a place to rest before the sun sets. His new charge follows him through the woods with a scowl, staying silent while they walk.

//

Below, in the underworld, Yuri's guardians search his room for any sign of where he had gone, and are alarmed to find the place in tatters. Chaos reigns as Lilia's booming voice rings through the caverns.

" _Find him,_ " The goddess hisses. " _Find him_."

Hounds, shades, and many of her vassals wander far for a clue.

She and Yakov will not rest until they locate Yuri.

When they do, that boy will have a hefty price to pay for running away from his responsibilities.

**Author's Note:**

> to be continued! ;)
> 
> thanks for reading! i hope you're enjoying whatever the heck this AU is so far. ♥
> 
> ✮[my tumblr](http://wbtrashking.tumblr.com/)  
> ✮[my twitter](https://twitter.com/wbtrashking)
> 
> updates (prob) on fridays/saturdays. ♥


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